Group mentality

We live in a world of smart phones, instant worldwide information, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, multiple forms of music, divorce, remarriage, open homosexuality, widespread lying, deceit and greed, a decline in moral values, lack of civic accountability and personal responsibility, and countless more changes that create the appearance of a world in chaos. However of this numerous changes, the recent surge in the previously hushed shame culture has shockingly evolved rather fast in an ever busy world.

It predominantly features a people awash in moral judgment. Folks who undervalue universal moral principle and uphold subjective personal values. In the shame culture, there is no room for moral relativism. An individual’s correctness or lack thereof, is fundamentally based on what the social community dictates by offering its utmost honour or utter disgust through its ultimate crusade platform, social media.

The domain of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the rest, are a world of constant display and observation. An unmistakable parade of an intense desire to be embraced and praised by these communities. A movement of social creatures thirsty for clusters and utterly dreadful of being condemned or exiled. Their moral code devoid of right and wrong but rather the continuum of inclusion and exclusion.

Social media can be, and has been, vicious to those who do not fit in either of its groupings. It erupts to sudden, unsolicited ridicule on anyone that ‘stumbles’. Difference of opinion get so hot, so fast, because even a minor slight to a group is perceived as a basic identity threat. The ultimate sin. Its ‘moral code’ values inclusion and tolerance but it can be strangely unmerciful to targets who disagree and don’t fit in singling them out for humiliation; spewing out bilious insults that are astonishingly common online. Typical character of an ever shifting fancy of any and every crowd.

Perplexing is the fact that in the true sense of things, an individual’s identity should be based on the basic standard of justice and virtue that are deeper and more permanent than the shifting fancy of the crowd.

Yet we live in an era of an omnipresent social media that is constantly rewriting the boundaries of public and private, exterior and interior therefore it is vital for every social media subscriber to possess a compass vision of an ultimate good. To individually discover and name a personal true north that is made of a defined novelty worth defending even at the cost of unpopularity and exclusion.